Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative activist and wealthiest living heir of the Mellon family, died in July 2014. Scaife as a young man inherited more than $200 million from the banking fortune built by his grandfather, Richard Beatty Mellon, and uncle, R.K. Mellon. While other contemporary Mellons concentrated on giving money to museums, art collections and education, Scaife became best known for using his fortune to influence politics. He gave $1 million for Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, and reportedly funded groups to dig up dirt on President Clinton. As a businessman, he could have been called Citizen Scaife. He built a media company that included Pittsburgh's Tribune-Review, other small weekly newspapers and a majority stake in the conservative online newsmagazine Newsmax. But Scaife remained reclusive, rarely granting an interview throughout his entire life. He did engage in a highly public feud with his sister Cordelia (a Forbes 400 member until her death in 2005) and two nasty divorces. Scaife was estranged from his son David, according to a relative. He is also survived by a daughter, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. The bulk of his fortune will likely go to his right-wing-leaning foundations (The Sarah Scaife and Carthage foundations) and to keeping his newspapers alive. More »

It has finally happened. A powerful group of leaders in international finance, the Group of Thirty, (G30) called last week for far-reaching banking reforms to restore public trust. It opened the door to dismissal if necessary of top executives in the banking sector, new approaches to hiring and stronger roles by boards of directors “to ensure read »

Anything can be marketed – especially political candidates. As the political season starts ramping up, we are witnessing the beginning of what is sure to be a fast-paced, rapid-fire, marketing competition play out. Day-by-day, almost any candidate can be on top of the leader board with polling numbers shifting drastically. Imagine marketing a read »

When Dan Price announced that he was raising the minimum salary in his company to $70,000, it made a lot of headlines. The story of the founder and CEO of the Seattle-based credit card processor Gravity Payments drastically cutting his own salary in order to raise the standard of living of even his lowest paid employees was written about just read »

We’re still incredibly far away from the sixth season of Game of Thrones, but given that it’s currently starting to film, news about what comes next is beginning to leak. And today, there’s a bit of fantastic news from set that the show has brought on Deadwood alumni Ian McShane to take on an unspecified read »

Warner Bros./New Line/Time Warner Inc.’s new Vacation sequel/reboot was the only wide release daring to debut alongside Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. The film opened on Wednesday with $3.8 million and earned another $2.5m on Thursday. As such, its $14.8m weekend brings its cume to $21.172m thus far. read »

Chinese corporations continue to grow bigger, according to this year’s list of Fortune Global 500 companies.

Ninety eight companies made it to the list, up from 92 last year, and 34 seven years ago; three companies continued to be in the top ten rank, beating the US and Japan—Sinopec Group (NYSE:SHI), China National read »

The content metrics you track should be influenced by your company goals. Simply put, you can’t half-ass this — many companies publish a handful of articles and give up when they don’t see a ton of leads flying through the door. read »

As hospital operators begin to report second period earnings — the sixth consecutive quarter of new revenue from once uninsured patients — the number and size of unpaid medical bills continues to fall thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The health law last year began to provide subsidized private health insurance coverage on public exchanges and read »

In the summer of 1970, between my sophomore and junior years of high school in Richmond, Virginia, a federal court ruled that the city’s school system had to be integrated. This became known as “forced busing,” which meant, of course, “forced busing, but this time of whites”. For years afterwards, politicians in central Virginia were expected to read »

In perhaps the sweetest post Mark Zuckerberg has ever posted on Facebook, he announced that he and his wife Priscilla Chan are expecting a baby daughter. What makes Zuckerberg’s post so remarkable, however, is that he shares the fact that their pregnancy is actually their fourth — the first three ended in miscarriages.